What Becomes Possible When We Step Away from the Familiar?

I’m writing this in Tuscany, a long way from my desk and the usual shape of my working week.

The days feel different here. We decide where we’re going over breakfast, drive through the countryside and stop when somewhere catches our attention. We linger over coffee and spend far longer over dinner than we would at home. There is less urgency and more time to notice what is around me. The light on the hills and the pleasure of deciding where to go next without having to fit it between Zoom calls.

I can feel myself slowing down.

Seeing the problem differently

I’ve noticed before that being away changes how I see things. Something that felt pressing at home no longer seems quite so important, while an idea I’ve been trying to force into shape becomes clearer when I’m looking out of a car window or sitting with a cappuccino on the terrace. The situation itself hasn’t changed but my relationship with it has.

When we’re trying to resolve something, we tend to think about it more. We turn it over, analyse it and keep returning to the same questions, because it feels as though more effort should eventually produce an answer. Sometimes it does, but often all that effort simply keeps us caught in the thinking that made the issue look difficult in the first place.

Then, after going for a walk, talking about something completely different, or sleeping on it, we suddenly see things differently. The important part is creating enough space for your thinking to slow down and for something new to occur to you.

The temptation to fill the space

I see this in coaching too. Insight often appears when we stop trying so hard to find it. As coaches, we can help by resisting the temptation to fill every pause, ask another question or guide the client towards what we think would be useful. Some of the most significant moments in coaching happen when neither person tries to manufacture them and this often feels uncomfortable because it asks us to trust what is happening and resist deciding too quickly what needs to happen next.

But when the coach remains fully present in the moment, the client has room to follow their own thinking and that’s when new insights appear.

Making time to notice our own coaching

The same is true of our development as coaches. We spend a great deal of time developing ourselves through webinars, books, courses and new approaches, alongside the coaching sessions themselves. It is easy to move from one client to the next, fitting training and reflection around an already full life. We may be learning all the time yet rarely stop to consider which habits have crept in, what we continue to do simply because it has become familiar or consider who we are becoming as a coach.

Questions like these need some breathing room and they were part of what led me to create La Dolce Vita for Coaches. I wanted experienced coaches to have time away from their everyday responsibilities, where they could explore their work with other coaches and allow ideas to develop without feeling that they had to rush towards a conclusion.

Being back in Tuscany has reminded me that the setting matters too and we don’t always need to work harder at finding clarity. Sometimes we need enough distance from our usual thinking to notice what we couldn’t see while we were in the middle of it.

We can create some of that space wherever we are, although spending time in Tuscany with La Dolce Vita for Coaches offers the chance to step away more fully from everyday life and see what emerges.

In the meantime, if there is something you’ve been trying hard to resolve, perhaps give it a little breathing room and see what becomes clearer when you stop searching for the answer.

If there is something you’ve been trying hard to resolve, what might happen if you left it alone for a while?

Until next time,

Cath

x

P.S. I’ll be sharing details of the next La Dolce Vita for Coaches soon. If spending time in Tuscany exploring your coaching with a small group of experienced coaches appeals to you, then let me know at cdaley@cathdaley.com